Page 13 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

1953
Determined to get
Reading up to 5000 characters per there first, James
second, the Colossus computer broke Watson and Francis
codes used by the German high command Crick rely on an X-ray
diffraction photograph
1944 taken by Rosalind
The world’s first programmable, Franklin to work out
electronic digital computers become the double helix US astronaut Buzz Aldrin is photographed by Neil
operational at Bletchley Park, where structure of DNA. Armstrong during the first manned lunar mission
they are used to decode German Unique to every
military intelligence messages. Built individual, these 1969
in secret, their significance goes twisted molecular After an intense Cold War space race against
unrecognised for decades. strands carry the Soviet Russia, the American Neil Armstrong
genetic information becomes the first human being to walk on
essential for life, the Moon. Claiming to have come in peace
growth and for all the world, he collects soil samples
reproduction. and plants the Stars and Stripes.

1950 2000
1945 1967 2012

Led by military As a postgraduate student at Cambridge, at After a 40-year search,
officials, teams of first Jocelyn Bell finds it hard to convince her scientists searching for
scientists scattered supervisors that the small blips she observes the elusive Higgs boson
across the US on computer print-outs are significant. She had particle, finally track it
work secretly discovered pulsars, rotating neutron stars down with the Large
to develop the that regularly emit beams of radiation and Hadron Collider at CERN
world’s first provide valuable celestial clocks. in Switzerland. This was
atomic bombs a major triumph for particle
before the physicists, because the
Germans. Two are boson’s existence
dropped over demonstrates the validity
Japan, ending the of other theories known
Second World War collectively as the
but leaving Standard Model.
a lasting radio-
active legacy.

Patricia Fara is
Postgraduate president of the British
astronomy
student Jocelyn Society for the History
Bell detected of Science and the
the pulse of author of Science: A
rapidly rotating Four Thousand Year
neutron stars History (Oxford
ALAMY/GETTY University Press, 2009)

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